Authors will sometimes say how a lucky break led to their breakthrough publication - being in the right place at the right time. But I often suspect that if they hadn't have been lucky at that moment, they'd have been lucky later, because they were trying to put themselves in the right places anyway. They made their own luck.
I've been lucky with my publishers. Writers sometimes get published by people who soon go bust. It's gone the other way with me, my publishers' growing reputations doing me no harm. They made their own luck too.
Nine Arches Press is going from strength to strength. It's become an ACE "National Portfolio Organisation" for 5 years, and it's been awarded money for a shorter project. Jane Commane has led many writing workshops, co-edits "Under the Radar" magazine, and is co-organiser of the Leicester Shindig poetry series. In collaboration with The Poetry School she runs Primers. These activities feed into each other - running workshops and magazines helps to discover talent and increase readership, and the more people who become involved with these activities, the more that sales increase, which in turn attracts bigger writers and more reviews. The icing on the cake is that Jane has a collection out with Bloodaxe in 2018. How does she find the time? There's an interview online
Nell Nelson's Happenstance won The Michael Marks Publishers’ Award for pamphlet publishing and is gradually publishing more books. Like Jane, there's a strong talent-spotting element to much that she does, and much networking. She's involved with several other activities - writing articles/reviews for Dark Horse and PN Review, judging, tutoring with Writers' Forum, etc - and hasn't given up writing poems yet. There's an interview online
I'm just back from 3 nights in Prague. Last time I was there, about 30 years ago, it was communist. Now convoys
of open-top cars carry orientals around, the happy wedding couples posing dramatically against the background of
the castle whenever they have a spare moment.
I recall few details of my first trip. I'm sure that Tesco wasn't around. Craft beers and street food have arrived. So have chimney-cakes. This week we
drank in a Monastery brewery that has re-opened after the onslaught of the multi-nationals. I had blueberry beer, IPA, and beer ice-cream there.
Years after my first trip I wrote 
We visited the Jewish zone. This Kafkaesque statue is outside a Synagogue. We went to the Kafka museum and passed the literature museum. I was surprised that Kafka wasn't more exploited around the city. I saw a Kafka cafe, and a Metamorphosis cafe, but that's all. We did the tour of the old town hall - behind the clock on the hour, then down into the catacombs (which used to be the city's ground level). They plan to rebuild the column that was in the square. We climbed the tower of the new town hall as well. In several places around the city we saw marks showing where the 2002 floods reached.
The UK influence goes beyond Tesco - we saw a bust of Churchill down a side-street, and a memorial for the Czechs who died while in the RAF. Lennon and Sherlock Holmes are remembered too. And all the receptionists and ticket sellers spoke good English. 
We spent quite a time in the parks - Petrin Park with its Hunger wall, maze, and Eiffel tower, and then Letna Park with its metronome built since my last visit. In the hotel I treated myself to Czech porridge, semolina and polenta. I liked the lard pate too.
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
